Poe Devotees Are Gloomy Over Losses and Vandalism at His Cottage in the Bronx

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The Bronx Society, of Arts and Sciences has called on the Parks Department to bar the public from visiting the Edgar Allan Poe cottage, which has been looted of a portrait and a statue of the raven that figures in Poe's famous poem. The raven vanished in 1971, the portrait, in 1972.

The request by the recently reconstituted society was made privately by letter and, was disclosed this week by Parks Department officials. The parks aides expressed Poe‐ian gloom over the losses, but said the department had no plans to exclude visitors from the white frame cottage, which overlooks the Grand Concourse at Kingsbridge Road.

In another development, the president of the Bronx Historical Society charged that the city was doing a “disgraceful” job of caring for the building, where Poe lived in the, eighteen‐forties. Said the society's president, Lloyd Ultan, “If the cottage were in Manhattan, it would never be neglected by the city the way it is; it seems that anything that is in the outer boroughs gets neglected.”

Death Is Marked

The strong feelings about Poe's cottage among historically minded Bronxites reflect the widespread interest in Poe's writings, which is running strong at campuses across the nation this year—the 125th anniversary year of Poe's death.

“Poe has been an amazingly durable figure,” said Prof. Herbert W. Edwards of the New York University English department, who said the attention given to Poe's work was due partly to the present wave of interest in the occult and abnormal psychology.

Another element in keeping interest strong has been the publication of a highly praised critical study of the poet, Daniel Hoffman's “Poe Poe Poe Poe Poe Poe Poe,” which came out in 1972. The work was only a drop in the huge bucket of existing Poe scholarship, however. More than 120 books about the poet are in print, as well as 60 editions of Poe's writings.

Poe scholars and admirers cherish Poe's Bronx cottage because it was cherished by the Virginia‐reared poet himself, “This place is a beautiful one” he wrote to a friend after he moved in in 1846, along with his ailing wife and his mother‐in‐law, Maria Clemm, who later described the house in these words:

“It was the sweetest little cottage imaginable. Oh, how supremery happy We were in our dear cottage home! We three lived only for each other. Eddie rarely left his beautiful home. I attended to his literary business; for he, poor fellow, knew nothing about money transactions.”

‘Bells’ in the Bronx

But the literary business was unremunerative in those days, and Poe was, as Professor Edwards put it, “miserably poor.”

He was productive, however: it was in the cottage that he wrote such poems as “The Bells” and “Ulalume,” which includes these lines:

The skies they were ashen and sober;

The leaves they, were, crisped and sere ...”

If Poe's writing seemed, gloomy, it reflected the Often turbulent state of mind: his wife died in 1847 and the poet himself died on Oct. 7, 1849, at the age of 40, after about of heavy drinking in Baltimore.

After Poe died, the Bronx cottage was preserved, along with a few of his belongings. In 1912 it was taken over by the city and moved a short distance to its present site in what is now called Poe Park.

Over the years, other Poe mementos were added to the house's furnishings, a Parks Department historian, Donald Simon, reported. “It's sad that the raven was taken, he said. “It's sometimes rather frustrating that so much of our city's heritage is vandalized or stolen or destroyed.”

Dr. Simon said the portrait was a 19th‐century oil painting which was unsigned and was valued, by the Parks Department, at $500. The raven, he said, was a black, carved wooden statue valued at $250.

The original, literary bird that dominates Poe's poem, “The Raven,” which was published in 1845, has achieved immortality through the famous line “Quoth the Raven, ‘Nevermore.’”

But a Parks Department inventory of 1970 listed the carved object prosaically as “one wooden statue of raven,” and Dr. Simon said that how and when it arrived in the cottage was not known.

Nor is it known, he said, how the raven and the portrait came to disappear. But the president of the Bronx Arts and Sciences Society, William Woolfson, said the other day that the cottage had continually been a target for vandals—who had even tried to set it on fire from time to time.

Mr. Woolfson reported that items of antique clothing had been filthed from the cottage as well.

The arts and sciences society has long had a special interest in the Poe mementos, but the organization was dormant in recent years and has only recently been revived by Mr. Woolfson, a retired Bronx Community College administrator, and a group of like‐minded Bronx cultural chauvinists.

To prevent further depredations, the society has asked the Parks Department to cancel the present visiting hours, which, as posted, are from 10 A.M. to 1 P.M. and from 2 P.M. to 4 P.M. Tuesday through Saturday, and from 1 P.M. to 4 P.M. on Sunday. Admission is free, and the cottage is closed on Mondays.

In defending the department's present admissions policy, Dr. Simon said “there are attendants in the park, one of whom tries to stay near the cottage, and the feeling is that when people go into the cottage he goes in with them, but the attendance is not very significant.”

The lack of a permanent custodian displeases Mr. Ultan, a professor at Fairleigh Dickinson University. “We've insisted for years now that the department place a caretaker in the cottage,” he said, “but they haven't done so.”

Both he and Mr. Woolfson said the cottage needed repair, and indeed some shingles are missing from the roof and dozens of slats have been torn out of its porch rails.

Dr. Simon said the department would get around to making repairs when the weather improved, but he said there was no plan to spend any of the $50,000 that the city earmarked some years ago for sprucing up the building.

Nor has the city made plans for memorial festivities this October to mark the anniversary of the poet's death, he said, although on the 80th anniversary, in 1929, there was a wreath‐laying ceremony at Manhattan's Riverside Park, near where Poe is said to have worked on “The Raven.” in the Bronx, devotees gathered at the cottage to celebrate the occasion, it being Prohibition, with cups of tea.

A version of this archives appears in print on April 3, 1974, on Page 45 of the New York edition with the headline: Poe Devotees Are Gloomy Over Losses and Vandalism at His Cottage in the Bronx. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe